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Election

TV ONE was New Zealand’s number one television choice for coverage of the 2014 General Election. The past week has proved a huge success with viewers, with impressive ratings for all ONE News programmes as well as record numbers of online streams.

John Gillespie, TVNZ’s Head of News and Current Affairs, says; “I’m so proud of what our team has achieved these past few weeks – from the ONE News bulletins to the Leaders Debates and our live Vote 2014 results show. Everyone has really put so much into our coverage, and as a result our journalism has led the way throughout the election period. Most importantly, our viewers have shown an incredible level of engagement, and not just in terms of ratings. The audience has participated in Facebook Q&A sessions with the leaders, completed Vote Compass and have sent us their feedback. That’s really gratifying and it’s proved a big success for us.” Continue reading »

The Coalition for Better Broadcasting had hoped to make Broadcasting an election issue but between dirty politics and Kim Dotcom, there has been barely any room for discussion on the key policies of the economy, health, education and the environment let alone broadcasting.

I’ve had a look at the broadcasting policies of all the parties and have summarised details below. In some instances, there were no publicly available broadcasting policies that I could find. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t exist but due to the difficulty in being able to find them, it would be safe to assume that broadcasting wouldn’t be a high priority for them. Continue reading »

TV3’s Election Night coverage, hosted by John Campbell, will be enhanced by cutting-edge graphics that will showcase the night’s results.

Duncan Garner will use 3D virtual studio technology to illustrate the voting numbers with instant updates from polling booths around the country.

Garner believes that the graphics will bring a whole new level of immediacy and excitement to the coverage: “This is seriously ground-breaking. Think CNN, think ITN, now think TV3 on election night. It’s exciting and a real privilege to be able to present these 3D graphics on the night. We’ll also have our live touchscreen system too. MMP and the various calculations can be enormously complicated but this technology breaks it down and presents it like we have never seen before in NZ. The results, as they come in, are fed into these graphics live, for the public to see. It’s bloody exciting.” Continue reading »

ONE News and Facebook are collaborating to offer an interactive and social experience for the 2014 General Election utilising data insights and trends. This collaboration provides a new way for the electorate and candidates to share their thoughts and opinions about politics in the lead-up to the election.

The first ONE News Leaders Debate is live-to-air on Thursday 28 August at 7.00pm, and Facebook will be used to field questions from voters for the leaders. Users will be directed to post their questions to the wall of the ONE News Facebook page – the aim is to take five viewer questions and put these to John Key and David Cunliffe live. Continue reading »

The Coalition for Better Broadcasting is adding its voice to the many appalled at TVNZ’s choice of Mike Hosking as moderator for the upcoming political debates.

“This is not good broadcasting “says Chief Executive Myles Thomas, “in fact this is terrible broadcasting. TVNZ’s decision to use a famously biased interviewer for the most important political debate of the election is very poor indeed. Continue reading »

Every election, TV3 and TVNZ conduct a series of live debates with the leaders. We’ve been along to observe and provide commentary and they’re fascinating to watch. With most of these debates, the audiences are supposed to be vetted to ensure they are real undecided voters rather than being stacked with one particular political leaning. Often, this isn’t the case and those who do end up in the audience have some political affiliation. When they get vocal, it’s obvious.

Labour, however, are now concerned about this years debates as TVNZ have named Mike Hosking as their moderator.

The Labour Party is in a standoff with TVNZ over plans to use presenter Mike Hosking to moderate the live televised leaders’ debates.

The state broadcaster is refusing to budge, declaring: “Mike is our man.” Continue reading »